A networking flaw has been discovered in the Linux kernel that could trigger a remote denial-of-service attack.

Versions 4.9 and up are "vulnerable to denial-of-service conditions with low rates of specially crafted packets", according to a US-CERT advisory this week. The bug is being tracked as SegmentSmack (CVE-2018-5390).

SegmentSmack – which sounds a bit like an American wrestler whose speciality is to close bouts just before an ad break – has prompted fixes for a wide variety of networking kit.

The flaw could be worse – there's no remote code execution – but it's an issue because hackers may be able to remotely tie up or crash vulnerable systems provided they are configured with an open port. Firewalls are a sufficient defence here.

Fortunately patches are already available to address the vulnerability from a long list of networking, security, storage and open-source OS vendors.